Response

Response

Don Gaffney

As Bishop Robinson has made public his call for
'alterations' to the Catholic Church, he ought not to
mind being asked to respond in public to one particular point which
in fact makes nonsense of his whole position.

My complaint is not the Bishop's denial of a catalogue of
doctrines held in perpetuity by all Catholics (see Kevin McManus
for a short list, November letters), nor does it concern individual
propositions of which some were addressed by Archbishop Coleridge.
Rather I ask Bishop Robinson to consider the simple logic of the
Church's account of itself, not merely inherent in its structure
but stated explicitly again and again from its beginning and down
through all the centuries.

The Church says, relying on Christ's authority and the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, (a) that it is infallible in its doctrines, (b)
that the meaning of those doctrines can never be changed.

How can you expect this same Church to proclaim by changing
doctrines that it has been fraudulent for the whole of its
existence, and indeed never had any right to exist? Your radical
overhaul of the Church would be in fact a complete demolition.
After this ecclesiastical hara kiri, why would you or anyone
else wish to have converse with an exploded myth? Surely you must
realise how farcical your position is ?

And please, could we be spared the kind of reasoning which
states that 'Since the Council of Trent we have come to
realise that the story of Adam and Eve was not based on an
eyewitness account.' In 70 plus years of reasonably close
acquaintance with Church history I've never heard any authority
make any claim remotely resembling that amusing furphy.